Hypothesis
by AnthyRose
Summary: Formerly 'The Radish and the Sprout'. On a routine purge, Raditz discovers a half-breed Saiyan girl. But introducing a long extinct variable into an adapted environment has unexpected, and deeply rooted, consequences. RaditzOC
1. Chapter I

_The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold,  
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;_

**-The Destruction of Sennacherib,** Lord Byron

A/N: Mature language.

O

The afternoon suns made strange shapes of the shadows. They darkened the ground so much that the blood was nearly impossible to see.

But he could smell it; adrift on the wind, musky and metallic, like a decanter of aged wine. The scent of it made him antsy, made his pulse quicken and his breath short—

_Beep_.

He lowered his head, blinking over the numbers on the scouter screen. _Shit_. He'd missed one. He could have sworn… Dark eyes roved the area, frowning, following the flashing arrow in his scope. _Distance 239.3, _it read_._

It _might_ have been amusing, had circumstances been different; trailing the lone native, giving them that one pittance of _hope_, only to snatch it away at the last possible second. _But not here_, he thought scowling. _Not_ _today_. The planet was wholly unsuited for any sort of leisure activities. Or anything at all, really.

It was _hot. _

He could survive in practically any environment with minimal resources, but _this_ was pushing it. The suns – twin red giants which, in his opinion were _too damned close to the planet_ – made the air painfully thin. The atmosphere, according to his pod, had exactly the _bare_ _minimum_ of what he needed to breathe. Moreover, the surface of the planet was a fucking furnace. Early on, he'd found flying an impossibility; at least as long as the suns were out. And too much of his efforts were going into breathing anyway. He'd been gasping since he left his pod over a day ago, and chasing after wayward natives who _refused to stay still and die _wasn't helping_..._

_Too_ _hot_. It was _too_ _fucking_ _hot_ here, and he didn't see how the natives could stand it, much less why anyone would want to _buy_ the place. But apparently someone _had_.

"_I have a mission for you, Raditz_."

If he were a lesser warrior, he'd probably have suffocated the moment he left his pod. That he'd been sent to the planet at all was telling. Probably that's what _He_ had expected. What everyone expected. Raditz grit his teeth, swallowed down the rising bile, forcing himself to focus on the sounds around him. The _tumpf_ _tumpf_ as his boots hit the ground. The whistle of wind around him. The hiss of sand rolling against itself.

_Oh_ _hell_, he thought suddenly. He would never get the shit out of his hair—

He stopped.

He hadn't paid much, if any, attention to the architecture. The natives here were primitive, their cities made of little more than baked mud. _But this_…

_Limestone_, he guessed, running a finger along a crumbling column. Or something like it. But if they had the tools to build something so _precise_, why the hell were they still living in dirt houses? He released a breath, flicking the sweat from his forehead and squinting up at the building. Even in its eroded condition it shone white in the sunlight, and he could imagine it once to have been something great. A shrine? It _couldn't_ have been a palace. Those were usually in the heart of the city, and this was kilos away from the last settlement. Maybe some kind of temple? The outside was inconspicuous, the etchings in the columns long since worn away by blowing sand. But it explained (in a sort of nonsensical way) why the fleeing native would choose to come _here_ rather than the next village.

_Feh_. He turned and spat on the sand before marching inside.

It was cool and dark.

…and it made him pause.

'_Dark'_ he had been expecting, but the temperature was…puzzling. The climate here felt almost…controlled? Manufactured? He narrowed his eyes, head tilted back as he took a wary sniff of the air. There was a definite frosted quality..._filtered_. Nothing that could have been natural on a planet like this, and he thought he heard the faint hum of machinery somewhere. Clearly this planet had been _visited _at some point.

_Whatever_. He wasn't getting paid to figure that shit out, and beyond a passing thought didn't really care. He leaned against a stone wall and shut his eyes. The heat was doing things to him, and he could only be glad that neither Vegeta nor Nappa was here to see.

_Tsh. Not like they'd fare any better_.

To make matters worse, he had yet to find any source of water…even though both his scouter and pod had brought up readings. That probably meant it was underground; a spring or something. It wasn't likely the natives here had learned the art of irrigation. His lips curled in both amusement and disgust. They were _so fucking primitive_ they were probably still _evolving_-

His scouter beeped again, and he opened his eyes. _Distance, 13.6_. An improvement, he thought scowling. Maybe he should just blast away the whole damned building. It would save him the trouble of searching. His fist was already glowing before he'd fully finished the thought, before he realized that if he destroyed the structure he'd be _back in the suns_. Back to trudging through hot sand and wind. Back to tracking down natives, who, though easily weaker than himself, were surprisingly adept at scattering and hiding themselves away—

His eyes traced the room. Alight with the flickering glow of his ki, he got a near clear view of it: a square shaped chamber, completely bare, supported by rounded columns throughout. Away from the elements, the inside was in comparably better condition than the exterior. There were— his eyes narrowed – _shapes_ etched along the column bodies. Pictures, he corrected. Weird spherical images of what were probably supposed to be suns blaring down from the skies, of thin stick like figures kneeling, or reaching reverently up towards it.

"You've gotta be kidding me_..."_

It had to be, literally, the most undeveloped planet he'd ever been too. He had stepped into the _dark_ _ages. _

And yet…

_And yet_.

There were whispers in his head, murmurings of faint recognition at the drawings. He was a soldier; moreover, a grunt. He had never given any great amount of thought to his history. There was a cold sort of remorse, an anger, but moreover a sense of _relief, _of_ self preservation_. _He_ had not perished on the planet Vegeta. _He_ had survived, for whatever reason. It was _he_, along with the other two, who would carry along the traditions and power of their race. That _he_, the son of a Third Class, himself a First, should survive among elites…

In his distraction he had approached the far wall of the chamber, staring with black eyes at the crude scene.

The Saiyans had been a tribal people once. There must have been a time when _they_ were drawing on cave walls and worshipping flaming balls of gas in the sky. But that had been long before he was born, before the advent of stolen technology, when his people were still wearing skins and rutting with animals—

A noise had him spinning sharply to the right, hands still aglow with ki. At the same time his scouter began to beep, and flashing yellow characters obscured the vision in his left eye.

The girl stood frozen in his gaze.

Her features were synonymous with the other natives he'd seen; thin, dark skinned, with rounded ears. She had hair the color of slow burning embers, cropped short around a pinched, narrow face. There was blood on her hands, blood smeared across the front of the shift she wore.

Something stirred within him at the sight. Something _visceral_ that had his breath quickening, his skin flushing, which had nothing at all to do with the thin oxygen. The sudden thought of having that lithe body struggling beneath him brought a slow smile to his face. It had been too long, and this strange alien girl would work as well as any-

He took a step forward, hands already working at the faulds of his armor, dark gaze fixed on the girl.

And then he _stopped_.

Her gaze was wide and wild and frightened but he wasn't looking at that. His eyes had locked onto something behind her. Something…_moving_. Something that whipped at the edges of the simple linen shift. Something long and thin and waving—

She had a _tail_.

It thrashed behind her, agitated and nearly feline. _Shit_, he thought. The figure before him heaved a trembling breath, and he caught the scent of her; the salt of sweat and tears, the metallic tang of blood, and something muted and underlying that must have been uniquely her—

_Female, _something in him whispered.

Female Saiyan. _Female_. Those words did not belong together; _had_ _not_ belonged together now for nearly 20 years. He stared, uncharacteristically silent, and she stared back.

And then she spun on sandaled heels and _fled_.

The echoes of those footsteps tore him from his daze, and his mind flooded with questions: Was she the _only_ one? Were there _others_ that he'd possibly killed…?

_Shit_, _I_ _don't_ _know!_ It wasn't like he'd been checking for tails before he'd—

But there had been no power-levels _above_ 30 here, he reasoned. The girl was only registering at 18 on his scouter. No Saiyan would _ever_ have a power-level that…that _pathetic_—

_But you don't know that she's Saiyan_.

She didn't _look_ Saiyan. And Saiyan's weren't the only tailed species in the universe, after all. It wouldn't be improbable to assume that there were other races out there with similar characteristics...would it?

_Fuck_ he wasn't some _scientist_. _How was he supposed to—?_

He pushed the thought away, tapping furiously at the buttons of his scouter. …which hadn't even _beeped_ until she'd been less than _five steps away-!_ _Piece of junk. _He could _never_ get the hang of the things—

_Distance, 31.1_, he read.

_Quick little thing, considering her power-level_.

He considered letting her run - just to see how far she got before she collapsed- but quickly axed the thought. She was too valuable. _He_— his breath came fast and shallow. It was…a sobering thought. A near foreign concept. He drew a tongue over sandy lips.

It was ridiculously easy, catching her. He appeared in front of her - much too fast for her eyes to follow - and she skidded to a halt, falling backwards to the ground and spraying sand. She was shaking, panting in short, hiccupping gasps that made him want to squeeze the air from her lungs. A moment later he realized those breathless gasps were words. She was speaking, over and over, the sounds deliberate and sharp. A prayer?

_Curse, more likely_, he mused, and not in any language he could understand. His eyes glinted in cold amusement.

"My," he said smirking, "we've only just met and you're _already_ leaving!"

She could not have understood him. But perhaps she recognized the expression on his face, the mocking tone in his voice, because her tail went rigid behind her. He found himself following the movement, lids drooping in lazy contemplation. It was palpable, her fury, and he was unsurprised- _pleased_ even- when she attacked him, clutching a small bone dagger he barely spared a glance at.

It took no effort at all to disarm her. A quick flick of his fingers, a little pressure, and the dagger fell from her grip.

_Untrained_, he dismissed, frowning.

She spat in his face.

_And stupid_, he added with a snarl, backhanding her into the sand. She landed face first, coughing blood, and when she went to scramble to her knees, he dropped one of his own into her back, forcing her back down. She screamed a protest, and his fingers found the hem of her dress and yanked it up.

The waning light of the sunset turned it an impossible shade, but he ignored the color for the moment as he grasped the flailing appendage. Softer than his own, he noted, and in his hand impossibly thin. His pulse quickened. Was _this_ the way the tail of a Saiyan female was supposed to look? To _feel_?

He did not remember; there was nothing for him to compare it to.

Beneath him, the girl had gone suddenly still, gasping out hoarse, half sobs. He had half a mind to knock her out just to _shut her the fuck up_. He couldn't concentrate, couldn't _think_. He was just a soldier: seek and destroy. It had never been necessary to _think-!_

Instinctively, his hand clenched around her tail. She stiffened beneath him, and the movement, or lack thereof, made him pause. He squeezed again, this time harder, and the scream that tore from her throat had him grinning madly, wildly, _triumphantly_. There could be no doubts about her heritage. _Not_ _now_.

Somehow he, Raditz_,_ had found a female Saiyan.

O

A/N: This story was originally written in May of 2002. By 2004 I'd only gotten up to chapter five. As some of you know through PMs, chapter six, which was supposed to have been published sometime in '04, was lost when my computer crashed. The result is that I haven't touched this story since, but I'd always planned to continue. The original plan was to simply do a run-through edit of chapters 1-5, but as I began re-reading said chapters in the summer of 2010, it became obvious that a complete re-write was in order. The resulting story will be the same, but definitely grittier and more mature. I still have the original 5 chapters saved, incase someone really, _really_ wants to read it.

_Concerning the Saiyans_: I don't believe they were nice people. Period. I believe they were a society built on power and respected nothing less. And when a Saiyan emerged who was more powerful than they thought should be possible, they saw them as a risk and killed them. Case in point? Raditz was prepared to kill his nephew because he thought him, 'too powerful'. Vegeta did not hesitate to kill Nappa once he became a liability. For those of you who count the movies as relevant, King Vegeta was willing to have Brolly killed because he threatened to become more powerful than the royal family. Even Bardock, the so called 'sensitive' Saiyan, did not change until shortly before his death. And this had more to do with his 'curse' than any natural remorse on his part. I believe eventually, given the time, the Saiyans would have destroyed themselves without the help of Frieza.

Mostly my concern is with Raditz. We know so little about him, and he is always written off so easily. And yet he must have shared the same endurance we see in Goku; he was born to a Third class, but managed himself to be classed as First. There must be a story behind him, right?

Anyways, please tell me what you think so far. ^^


	2. Chapter 2

_A word is dead when it is said,_  
_some say._  
_I say it just begins to live that day._

- Emily Dickinson

O

The wind was angry as he touched down near his pod, the girl's prone form thrown limply over his shoulder. One of the suns had completely set; the other did not appear far behind. _Good_, he thought. _Finally_. No suns meant less heat. Less heat meant he could work unhindered. He cast suspicious eyes to the blushing skyline. With two suns, it was unlikely the nights here lasted long. But even a few hours reprieve from the heat would be enough time to finish the job. The thought of staying even one more day…

_But first_…

He grabbed a handful of material and _yanked_. Knees banged and scraped against his armor on their descent, and when he set her on her feet, she swayed backwards. His eyes narrowed. Admittedly their subsequent flight probably had a lot to do with her disorientation. He suspected it was the only reason he hadn't been kneed, clawed, or otherwise _maimed_ during the trip—

Her head lolled. He caught her just as her knees buckled beneath her. Fingers crawled through her hair, jerked her to him. She made a noise, something between a grunt and a cry, and thin arms pushed ineffectually against him as he studied her.

Her face was ashen. The right side was swollen and colored from his blow, and tear tracks dried in trenches along her cheeks. But most startling were the eyes. _Vivid amber-orange_. They looked…_were_ a strange combination against the dark skin. _Deformed _was the word, he thought distastefully. These were not Saiyan eyes. These were alien and foreign and _wrong—_

If not for the tail, he would never have recognized her.

He would have fucked her and killed her, (and still planned to do the former) because outwardly she looked – _was_- nothing like a Saiyan. Too thin, too soft, too _weak_. She was a mutation; impure of blood, strangely colored and shaped and altogether _wrong_, and had the Saiyan race still been around, she would have been killed at birth. Saiyans, he remembered, had not been kind to half-breeds.

But who sired her?

The planet Vegeta had been gone now for nearly twenty years. (…actually that number was probably closer to sixteen or seventeen, but he was never sure which). He _was_ sure, however, and with near certainty, that Nappa had never set foot on this planet. By default this ruled out Vegeta as well, because the young prince was never without at least one of them.

So then, was there _another_ Saiyan out there _besides_ the three of them…?

He thought briefly of his brother, but the only image his mind would conjure was that of an infant, small and pink and crying with balled fists and impossibly black hair. And he was likely dead anyway, he dismissed. Regardless, this girl was too old to have been sired by Kakkarrot. And his scouter hadn't picked up any particularly _strong_ readings—

…which meant that whomever the Saiyan, male or female, they were long since gone from the planet. Or dead.

_Or both, _he conceded. _Hmn_.

He ran a calloused finger down her jaw, and suddenly, _abruptly_, the glazed look in her eyes cleared. She was fighting against him, vicious and hateful. Snarling and bucking and pulling and _screaming_—

His grip tightened in her hair, and he wrenched her neck back –_hard_ -until she let out a choked gasp. She was far from compliant; her body trembled with barely restrained emotion, but for the moment at least she remained still, breathing in shallow pants that fanned puffs of warm air against his face.

_Stupid_, he thought irritably. His gaze dipped from her face to her neck, where a rapid pulse beat. The skin there was smooth, lightly beaded with sweat. The sight of it, exposed, bare before him, her legs tangled against his own, eyes screwed tightly shut, body pressed forcefully against him, made him aware of her in a way that had him cursing under his breath. _No_ _time_—

The door of his pod opened with a _whoosh; _he threw her in.

_Too_ _hard_, he realized belatedly. Her head hit the console with a dull thud, and when after a few moments she finally stirred, her motions were disturbingly sluggish. "Shit," he muttered. The readings on his scouter fluctuated between 6 and 8. _Oh hell_. _Are you fucking kidding me—? _Her power level had _dropped_ eleven points in less than _three_ minutes. There was _no_ _fucking way_ she could be _that_ _weak_—

But then those feral, orange eyes met his own, lips pulled back in a silent snarl that revealed faintly pointed canines. Like his own. Like a _Saiyan's_. He smirked. What other similarities were there between them? What _differences? _More importantly, was there enough Saiyan blood to cancel out whatever weaknesses she'd inherited from the _other_ genes?

He slammed the pod door shut and watched her through the window. The emotions that played across her face were sickening in their openness. Fear. _Panic_. Fury. _Hysteria_. Grief. All running together in a looping mass. It grated at his nerves. _Such an unshielded mind…_ He couldn't fathom displaying such weakness. It was tantamount to defeat. Instinct _alone_ should have stamped it out of her…

Impossibly thin fingers –joined to impossibly thin hands that couldn't _possibly_ have been made for fighting - lay flat against the window, fast becoming fogged by errant gasps. She was literally coming apart at the seams.

_Just knock her out_. _It'll be easier. _

And it _would_ be. And he was sorely tempted. _So very tempted_ to staunch the flow of tears he could see brimming in those alien eyes, or the scream that lay just at the edge of her throat. She beat against the window of the pod, fingers sliding along the walls, amber irises constricted to pinpricks, looking for all the world like the trapped animal she was. _Like_—

Dark eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

Was it the unfamiliar materials of his pod that frightened her? The blinking lights? The cold feel of metal around her…?

Muted gasps gave way to full out screams.

…or was it the tiny, enclosed space that caused her mounting panic?

He grit his teeth. Even closed the pod did not completely muffle her cries. _More than cries_, he corrected. These were frenzied wails that only seemed to escalate with each passing moment. It was just further proof that though she might have a tail, this girl was no Saiyan.

_Fuck._ He'd just knock her head against the pod a few times. Honestly one hit would be enough. That ought to keep her out for a while. He'd start screaming _with_ her if she didn't _shut the hell up_—

He paused mid-step in the sand, eyes going wide in what was, for him, a rare moment of insight: She would welcome unconsciousness. Not just welcome it; she would _relish_ it and the nothingness it provided. Would cling to it like a lifeline.

And she would learn nothing.

His hand dropped to his side. He would leave her to her panic. She could scream until her vocal cords tore, until her lungs collapsed, until her mind caved in on itself. _She_ _would_ _learn_. And maybe when he returned there would be at least a _semblance_ of Saiyan.

O

There were no other Saiyans here.

He'd expected as much, but it didn't stop him from looking; from checking every waistline for a tail, from checking every face for tell tale Saiyan features- however minute- before killing. She was the lone gem among the ash, it seemed, but even still he found himself retracing his steps, examining the mangled bodies that lined the sand, fanning through the flies and scavengers with uncharacteristic care to study what was left of the bodies.

_No_ _tail_.

_Of course not, you fool!_ He could imagine the caustic voice of Vegeta scoffing at the very idea. He was being ridiculous; _stupid_ even. What had he thought to find? A village of Saiyans? _Ha!_ Finding surviving Saiyans had never been high on the metaphorical priority list, but now for the first time, Raditz found himself seriously contemplating it.

What _if_ there were others…?

He'd been old enough before the planet's demise to remember the workings of Saiyan culture. Theirs had been a society of constant motion. Of productivity. Of _soldiers_. The idea of _every_ Saiyan being on planet at the time of the disaster was, now that he thought about it, fairly ridiculous. He'd even go so far as to say impossible. Many would have been out on missions. The weaker infants, like his brother, would have been shipped off to other planets. It would've only taken an infant a few years with the help of a full moon to completely wipe a small planet…and subsequently deplete the food source. Predictably, those Saiyans would have languished and died, forgotten. And with all records destroyed along with the planet Vegeta, there was no way of knowing who was sent where in order to retrieve them.

Ah, but the others… the _older_ warriors. Why had _they_ never reported back? Nappa, he recalled, had even commented on it once or twice. Vegeta himself had not seemed to care.

"If they aren't strong enough to make it back on their own," he'd dismissed, "then they're _useless_." The subject had never been broached again.

And with only the three of them left…it was worth neither the effort nor resources it would take to try and locate any stragglers, anyway. But it had always been a given that any Saiyan survivors would naturally join them.

But the girl was not technically a 'survivor'. She was not technically even a Saiyan. In body or mind. 'Joining them' would be out of the question because she'd never be able to keep up-

He dropped the random corpse he'd picked up, spitting a mouthful of flesh and rotted blood to the ground. _Damn_. The suns had already burned most of the bodies into a tasteless, rubbery _mess_. He wiped a hand across his mouth, watching irritably as the flies latched back on to the corpse. _No_ _tail_, _either, _he added as an afterthought.

No tails, but he found a tiny oasis and gorged himself on water and reptiles.

It was nearing midday as he made his way back to his pod.

The suns were just as hot and irritating as they'd been the previous day. More so, he suspected. The sweat was like an adhesive, gluing airborne particles of sand to his skin. His boots and armor and what felt like every orifice of his body were filled with the stuff, and he wanted nothing more than to _leave_ and _never_ _come_ _back_, but somehow he found himself standing – simply standing- at the pods window.

She did not move.

_Stupid_, he thought. But at least she wasn't screaming. _Anything_ was an improvement over _that_.

He watched her for a full minute.

Annoyance gave way to confusion. She wasn't…she wasn't doing _anything_. _Head bowed, orange hair curled around her face, shoulders drooped, eyes hidden_. The scene was startlingly familiar. _He had seen this before_—

Even when the door opened she did not respond, and the fact that she was so blatantly ignoring him made his jaw tick. He grabbed an ankle and flung her out and onto the sand.

This, at least, seemed to jar her. She watched him with dull, glassy eyes, pausing at the blood that stained his armor and skin. He smirked, crossing his arms and waiting for the inevitable breakdown, but her expression remained the same.

_Interesting_.

The linen shift she wore had ridden up to her thighs when he'd tossed her, but she did not seem to notice or care. She had long legs; too long to be considered normal, which had seemed a staple of the natives. The shape of her calves told him she did a fair bit of running, which he could appreciate. Right now those legs were bent at the knees and pulled close to her chest. Her tail lay limp, wilted in the sand beside her.

It was…it was not the sight he had expected to be greeted with. _Better_ _than_ _crying_, he thought again, but this blank apathy was undoubtedly worse.

She spoke then, in a low monotone devoid of any recognizable emotion. Behind the hoarseness and rasp from her screams, _or_ _perhaps because of it_, her voice was deep and throaty and…definitely not the voice he would've pegged for this gawky girl. When that glassy stare did not waver, he realized she'd been speaking _to_ him. And apparently waiting for a response.

He let out a barking laugh. Simply put, her dialect did not exist to the Organization. His pod's database had had no record of the language or even the people, so there'd been no rumination of words during his stasis here. Even so, it was not hard to guess what she'd said. The empty look in those bruised eyes said it all.

"They're all dead," he confirmed. And though she didn't understand the words, his accompanying nod was unmistakable.

She did not visibly react. She had already known, he suspected. Hell, if her initial reaction to him were any indication, she'd probably seen him in action. _Welcome to life, sweetheart_. She watched him a moment longer before simply turning away.

And that was it.

No screams. No tears. No attempts at attacking him. She simply turned away, presenting him with her back. Deliberately. The message was the same in any language.

It might have been funny. He might have _laughed_ at her audacity—

Except that it _wasn't_ funny. And it was made all the more incongruous because this…this _girl_, this little _half-breed_ _child, _heseethed, had no idea at all what it was she was rejecting. And it made him furious. How _dare_—

Did she _want_ to die? Who would _willingly_ choose death? And how did she think she had a choice in the matter…?

He was at her before he even realized he'd taken a step. He spun her around and slapped her. She fell backwards in the sand, but not before a sandaled foot snapped towards his face, surprisingly fast. He caught it without even blinking, impressed despite himself. There was a Saiyan in there, dormant beneath layers of weakness and unconditioning…

Her hands flew to his face, fingers clawed, and he caught them just before they reached his eyes. He wrenched them behind her back, capturing them in one hand while simultaneously jerking her thrashing form to him until she straddled his knee. His other hand fisted greedily beneath her dress to find her tail.

_There_. Fingers closed around it. He hadn't realized he was breathing hard, or that his mouth was open and –

Perspiration made her skin salty. His mouth lay just at her shoulder, eyes staring behind her at the tail in his hands. _Her one saving grace_. And glaring weakness, for she had gone still in his arms, trembling, holding her breath. He could smell the taint of fear. Of _him_. The weakest among elites. The lone _minority_ in a trio of _minorities-_

But in the end it had not been the Prince or the General who had found the boon of their race. It had been the grunt. It had been _he__, _Raditz.

He reveled in it.

She spat something at him, still caught in his vice-like embrace, something sharp and unfriendly that would likely translate as an insult to his mother. He chuckled, then ran slow fingers up the length of her flailing tail. He had noticed the color the prior evening, had thought it just a product of the waning light of the sunset. But now, on the heated sands beneath glaring suns, he realized that what he'd seen before had not been discoloration due to lighting. It had not been a product of the shadows or his imagination. Her tail, her _Saiyan_ tail, was _orange_.

It was yet another reminder that the alien girl he held was not the real thing.

O

My apologies! This chapter was NOT supposed to take this long. I've actually been trying to post it for the past several days, but for some reason kept getting an error message. (?) Not to mention my annoying (read: obsessive) habit of rewriting chapters about 50 times before posting. So yeah…

Thanks to all you out there who are reading, and _especially_ those of you who took the time to review! **xkitkatx**, **Adam**, **Kiki Myou**, **Seregunda**, **bleaktuesday, **and **fsalt****. **THANK YOU! Bleaktuesday (I tried to PM you but your PMs are disabled. Just wanted to thank you for such awesome and inspiring words!) Adam, I still have the original fic. It was only 5 chapters. There are a few _minor_ spoilers in the original, but as soon as I get past them in this fic, I'll probably repost the other one just for kicks. (bad spelling and all!)


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